- Last spring, ambient artist Rafael Anton Irisarri, AKA The Sight Below, decided to leave his longtime home of Seattle for New York. In the process of moving, a U-Haul truck containing his entire studio was stolen, and later recovered with only a piano remaining. A fundraising effort helped him rebuild, and Will Her Heart Burn Anymore is the first material made in his new Black Knoll Studio. Recorded on New Year's Eve 2014, it's an abrasive and imposing send-off to a tough year.
The EP bears some resemblance to Irisarri's last album under his given name, 2013's The Unintentional Sea. Distortion was a key element on that slow-drifting record, and it completely consumes this EP. It's a four-part suite that starts out angry, burying the melodies underneath a thick layer of noise. As Will Her Heart Burn Anymore moves through its sections, the music becomes bleary, mournful and then hopeless, like a festering pool of negative emotions. By the time it bottoms out into doleful repetition in the fourth section, the EP can become emotionally exhausting. But there's a thrill in how direct and fiery it is, and Will Her Heart Burn Anymore is easily one of Irisarri's rawest works yet. It lacks the nuance of his best music, but nuance isn't the point here—it's about a musician coming back from a forced period of silence by being as loud as possible.
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